By Philipp Eichhorn

Grammar is a way of knowing. 

 

A clause shapes air into omen.

Fate lends its archival ear.

 

We sleep, said I, we parse desire.

       —for they loved us not, nor knew…

       Else, else, O God the singer—

 

The song flows into the idea of song

       cast from the innermost stream.

 

With juniper and draught she tames

       the snake, the tree gets fleeced.

          

A name is not enough to define its thing.

         

Immeasurable matter, these words we spell

       my body’s tether to perennial soul.

 

The particles around our performance iridesce. 

 

It is choice that changes the voyage and we

       without ever declaring its name.

James Meetze

James Meetze is the author of six books of poetry, including Dayglo (2011), winner of the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, and Phantom Hour (2016), both from Ahsahta Press. He is editor, with Simon Pettet, of Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Finnish, Serbian, and Croatian. He is Professor of Writing and Chair of Honors at the University of Arizona Global Campus and teaches in the Depth Psychology & Creativity Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He divides his time between the coasts of California and Croatia. His new book, The Long Now, is out from White Stag, March 2026.

Philipp Eichhorn

Philipp Eichhorn is a South Germany–based artist and designer who has dedicated himself to creating analogue paper collages since 2014. Living and working at the foot of the Black Forest, in the culturally rich border region between Germany, France, and Switzerland, he draws inspiration from this dynamic landscape. Eichhorn’s collages exist in the tension between conceptual clarity and visual irony, characterized by bold contrasts and deliberate juxtapositions. He combines ironic, often ambivalent imagery with structured compositions and architectural forms, generating a dialogue between order and spontaneity. Through the careful layering of diverse analogue materials and stylistic elements, his works achieve moments of friction that give rise to what he calls the “magic” of collage. Guided by intuition rather than formal rules, Eichhorn’s process is exploratory and reflective, allowing his images to evolve organically into compositions that balance precision with playfulness.

www.13mixedmodes.de